Deprivation can occur when there is insufficient opportunity for interaction with a mother figure (privation).
In 1949 the World Health Organisation (WHO) were concerned about the number of children who were homeless or growing up in instituitions so they commissioned Bowlby to look into this matter and report back to them whether the above children were likely to be suffering from their experiences and what the best kind of upbringing for these children was. Bowlby concluded that a “warm, intimate and continuing relationship with a mother figure is an essential precondition for mental health”. Maternal deprivation or a disturbed emotional attachment between mother and child was said to cause irreparable damage, not only to the child but also to society as a whole.
Bowlby (1951) stated that “Deprived children, whether in their own home or not, are a source of social infection as real and serious as carriers of diphtheria and typhoid”.
Bowlby’s report to the WHO had a great deal of influence among health care officials, social workers, teachers and parents. The conclusions he reached were very controversial and caused arguments right from the beginning.
Contrary to behaviourists and Freudians, who believed that physical comfort was a caregiver’s primary concern, Bowlby suggested that emotional care was at least equally important. He states that “Maternal attachment is as essential for healthy psychological development as vitamins and minerals are for physical health”.
Bowlby developed the idea of Monotropy: The idea that a human infant would develop only one special attachment to its mother, which was completely different from the other relationships which it developed, and that it would cause the child great distress and lasting damage if it was broken”.
Bowlby felt that it was essential that the infant remained in almost continual contact with its mother during the first five years of life .He felt that there was a “critical period” in the formation of attachments , he believed that children who experience maternal deprivation below the age of four will suffer permanent damage.
Bowlby (1969) has argued that there is a bias for a child to attach himself to one figure (a characteristic known as “Monotropy”) and that this main attachment differs in kind from attachments to other subsidiary figures. However there is a lack of supporting evidence for this claim, Schaffer (1971) has concluded that Bowlby’s view is not borne out by the facts and that the breadth of attachment is largely determined by the social setting. The issue remains unsettled and requires further study.
Bowlby performed a retrospective study of 44 juvenile delinquents and found that 17 of them had been separated from their mothers for a period of time before the age of five years. He concluded that their juvenile delinquency was evidence of the lasting damage which the period of maternal deprivation had produced and that separating young children from their mothers, even temporarily, could have this kind of effect.
Other studies claimed to have demonstrated similar damaging effect of maternal deprivation, such as maternally deprived children being less intelligent or suffering from “affectionless psychopathy” (i.e a complete lack of social conscience or social relationships).
More support for Bowlby’s views came from a classic piece of research conducted by Lorenz (1935). In 1937 Lorenz demonstrated that young geese would develop an attachment to a human being and would follow them around. It was already known that many birds attach themselves to the first figure they see upon hatching. Lorenz called this process “Imprinting” because it seemed that young geese had formed a powerful imprint, or impression, of the object as if it were their new “mother”.
Lorenz performed several studies of imprinting, investigating the way in which these attachments took place. He found that there seemed to be a “critical period” after hatching, during which the attachment had to be made or it wouldn’t happen at all.
Further evidence came from Harlow’s work with the rhesus monkeys, (1959). An experiment was devised where a monkey was given two different “mothers”, one was a wire tube with a monkey-like face and a feeding bottle attached, the other had no feeding bottle but was wrapped in a cloth. The position taken by behaviourists and Freudians would be that the monkeys should become attached to the “mother” that offered food rather than comfort.
Infact, the monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth mother, visiting only the other “mother” for food. When the monkeys were frightened they always went to the cloth mother.
In later life the monkeys raised without a responsive mother became socially maladjusted and had difficulty with mating and parenting.
When considering Harlow’s research it could be argued that making generalisations from animal to human behaviour is not always appropriate.
Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis was important in changing our view of early emotional behaviour from one of dependency (the behaviourist and Freudian view) to one where the infant is an active participant in eliciting care.
Mc Faydon (1994) suggests that many critics “seem almost to have got stuck in a time warp, hanging on to Bowlby’s early ideas, which were of course extremely controversial but also important and influential at that time.
The diagram below shows “developmental pathways from maternal deprivation”.
Word Count: 1,079 words.
References:
- Bowlby J, (1969) Attachment and Loss (volume 1) London, Hogarth press.
- J Holmes, (1995) John Bowlby and attachment theory, London, Routledge.
- Michael Rutter (1991) Maternal deprivation reassessed, Middlesex, Penguin books.
- N.Hayes & S. Orrell (1998) Psychology an Introduction (3ed) Longman.
